“In fact, of all the celebs our source chatted with, only Jon Voight spoke out against Gibson. ‘I’m not happy with it,’ he said. ‘I have been to Israel and am very supportive of Jewish concerns. I have seen the movie and I don’t think it was fair.’ When asked if he thought “The Passion of the Christ” was anti-Semitic, Voight replied, ‘I think I just answered that question.'”http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4375707/

Let’s see…CBS (Viacom) presenting Penn & Teller’s trashing of Mother Teresa in May.
Now a movie about JP2. Ian Holm withdraws for “personal reasons”. What does Voight’s acceptance suggest about the script?
(Voight, who compared Gibson to Hitler on Scarborough, and wondered darkly about Gibson’s “agenda”.)

Let’s not make any assumptions. We can certainly hope that Jon Voight, like any good actor, does good research on his character and learns from it. Also, remember that John Paul II was once an actor himself, and will surely be willing and able to extend a little helping hand from beyond. Don’t forget the story of the patron saint of actors, St. Genesius, who went from learning how to parody a Christian priest to becoming a Christian martyr.
Finally, when I hear that an actor has withdrawn from a project for “personal reasons”, I usually assume there’s some kind of illness or trouble in the family. I hope that I’m wrong about that with Mr. Holm.

Thanks Maureen, for the story of St. Genesius. It’s new to me, but I can only hope that something similar happens with Jon Voight, that this film leads to a truer understanding of Catholicism and back to the Church.

Ian Holm had a bout of cancer a while back, which might be the “personal reason.” Although a far finer actor than Voight, he was an odd choice to begin with, being a small man.
Current scholarship says that St. Genesius was never an actor.

I am not too sure about John Voight as the Pope either. If you want to see a good movie about the Pope watch the DVD entitled “Pope John Paul II.” It was made in 1984 and stars Albert Finney as the Pope, Nigel Hawthorne as Cardinal Wydszenski, and Patrick Stewart as Party Secretary Gomulka.

Michael and Maureen of “Let’s not make any assumptions.”
Judging from CBS/VIACOM’s last vicious foray, I think we have reason to be alarmed. The Catholic League reacted to the May 2005 show – which was repeated(!) after all the uproar. These things don’t just happen accidentally.
“According to Donahue, who plans a press conference in front of the hotel in New York City where the Viacom meeting is being held, an episode of Showtime’s Penn and Teller show “Holier Than Thou” was a “Nazi-like assault on Catholicism, and on the person the show calls “Mother F***ing Teresa.” Showtime is owned by Viacom.
Stormed Donahue: “In the 12 years that I have been president of the Catholic League, I have never witnessed a more vicious attack on Catholicism than what appeared this week on the Showtime program ‘Penn and Teller.’ The episode, ‘Holier Than Thou,’ was a frontal assault on Mother Teresa and her order of nuns, Missionaries of Charity (as well as Gandhi and the Dali Lama).
“Like most Americans, I like parodies and have no problem, per se, with irreverent humor. But when humor becomes insult, that is a different story. And that is what happens here: comedy quickly morphs to vitriol. Indeed, as the show progresses, the level of anger becomes palpable and the degree of distortion becomes mindboggling. This is no comedy – it is Nazi propaganda right out of the Leni Riefenstahl school of filmmaking.
“The Mother Teresa that the world has come to love and revere is made to look like a cruel, exploitative, self-serving nun who ripped off the poor. We are told that Mother Teresa intentionally let the poor suffer, providing neither beds nor bathroom facilities. ‘She had the f***ing coin and pissed it away on nunneries,’ says Penn. As for the nuns who worked with Mother Teresa, they are referred to as ‘f***ing c***s.’
“It does not bother me when they call me ‘Catholic Boy’ on the show (though the term ‘Jew Boy’ would never cross their lips), nor does it concern me when they talk about ‘f***ers like Bill Donohue [who] only see good in her.’ But when they mock the Catholic Church’s teaching on the meaning of suffering, and when they say of the poor that ‘They had to suffer so that Mother F***ing Teresa could be enlightened,’ then they are behaving like monsters.”http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/5/25/164757.shtml

Genesius
(1) Genesius (of Rome)
A comedian at Rome, martyred under Diocletian in 286 or 303. Feast, 25 August. He is invoked against epilepsy, and is honoured as patron of theatrical performers and of musicians. The legend (Acta SS., Aug., V, 119) relates: Genesius, the leader of a theatrical troupe in Rome, performing one day before the Emperor Diocletian, and wishing to expose Christian rites to the ridicule of his audience, pretended to receive the Sacrament of Baptism. When the water had been poured upon him he proclaimed himself a Christian. Diocletian at first enjoyed the realistic play, but, finding Genesius to be in earnest, ordered him to be tortured and then beheaded. He was buried on the Via Tiburtina. His relics are said to be partly in San Giovanni della Pigna, partly in S. Susanna di Termini and in the chapel of St. Lawrence. The legend was dramatized in the fifteenth century; embodied in later years in the oratorio “Polus Atella” of Löwe (d. 1869), and still more recently in a work by Weingartner (Berlinn 1892). The historic value of the Acts, dating from the seventh century, is very doubtful, though defended by Tillemont (Mémoires, IV s. v. Genesius). The very existence of Genesius is called into question, and he is held to be a Roman counterpart of St. Gelasius (or Gelasinus) of Hierapolis (d. 297). He was venerated, however, at Rorne in the fourth century: a church was built in his honour very early, and was repaired and beautified by Gregory III in 741.”
Source: Catholic Encyclopedia. Protestant, until his death bed conversion, comedian Bob Hope had a set of St. Genesius cuff-links, a gift from his Catholic wife. He retold the story of St. Genesius several times during his career usually with a comic quip such as if a bad comedian could be saved there was hope for everyone. I recall a sister in catechism relating a similar story, but setting it in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Anti-religion plays were all the rage in the Soviet Union until Stalin eased up on the atheism propaganda during WWII, but I have been unable to verify if something like the alleged martyrdom of Saint Genesius did in fact occur in the Soviet Union.

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